There are well-known container feeding systems for feeding containers such as blood extraction tubes held by racks along a belt conveyer line to predetermined analyzers for biochemical or immunological analysis.
In such prior art container feeding systems, container feeding lines and control systems are assembled as fixed components for delivery according to the scale of facilities to which the container feeding systems are delivered. In other words, container feeding systems of the same version can be delivered only to facilities of the same scale. This means that the versatility of the systems is very poor. In addition, since the systems are special order products, their cost is high.
In another aspect, some of the prior art container feeding systems, in which a plurality of analyzers are disposed one after another along a container feeding line, are adapted such that containers are fed with priority to analyzers ready to receive containers for analysis, In such a case, however, a single computer is used to grasp the status of analyzing in all the analyzers and controls the whole container feeding line according to the grasped information. Therefore, this kind of control is extremely complicated, thus leading to high cost.